A Semiotic Approach to Teaching Media Literacy to Nonnative Speakers of English.

Curry, Mary Jane

This paper examines how semiotic analysis may be useful in teaching media literacy to nonnative speakers of English (NNSs), including both immigrants and international students who plan to return to their countries. It focuses on two television shows. The first show, "Friends," covers issues and problems of contemporary urban life for members of white, middle class Generation X in which friends are thought to replace the nuclear family structure as the central unit of society. The second show, "The X-Files," deals with the supernatural and the use of futuristic technology, treating an anomalous area between two binaries: the technologies and epistemologies of postmodern society and people's fascination with and fear of the extraterrestrial and the notion that more intelligent life exists on other planets. This paper examines: media literacy and popular culture; social anxiety and the anomalous on television; naturalization and representation; modes of address; how advertising constructs the ideal viewer; stances for decoding; and doing media literacy with NNS students. (Contains 14 references.) (SM)